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The Washington Nationals own a comfortable lead in the National League East and are almost certainly playoff bound this season. But their infirmary continues to grow, with reliever Ryan Madson the latest to go down.

Madson was placed on the 10-day disabled list before Thursday’s road game against the San Diego Padres with a right finger sprain, coinciding with right-hander Shawn Kelley returning from the DL.

At the moment, the Nationals are without outfielders Bryce Harper, Jayson Werth, and Adam Eaton, as well as shortstop Trea Turner and starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg, though all are expected to be ready before the playoffs.

With a 13 ?-game lead over the Miami Marlins entering Thursday, Washington has the cushion to let its players heal. The Nationals are projected with a 100-percent chance to win the National League East per FanGraphs, with Baseball Prospectus slightly less optimistic, at 99.9 percent.

After all, despite not having the best history with race, the Sox do have some great options in this case. There’s Pumpsie Green, who first broke the color barrier on Boston’s roster, or Jim Rice. Or it could be as easy as putting Ortiz’s name on it, especially since (as Henry notes) Dominican fans and players have become an important part of the Boston family.

Whatever the case, it’ll be up to the city to say yes or no. With the increased rate of other cities and organizations removing monuments and changing names, now may finally be the time for this supposed can of worms to be embraced.

In a landslide, 31 of 32 NFL owners voted Monday to move the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas to the praises of most outside the Bay Area.

Bill Foley, the NHL’s newest owner whose expansion Golden Knights soon will share the Sin City’s suddenly burgeoning professional sports scene, is looking at the NFL’s relocation through a more critical lens, specifically as it involves the $750 million in public money Las Vegas lawmakers secured to help finance the Raiders’ new $1.9 billion stadium.Authentic Youth Carnell Lake Jersey
I felt like there were a lot better ways to spend $750 million than bringing the Raiders to Las Vegas, Foley said Monday on Vegas Hockey Hotline. We could spend it on police, firefighters and teachers and have them all be the best in the country. But I guess we’re going to spend it on the Raiders.

John Danks Youth Jersey The Wild, coming off a 106-point season, are on the preseason short list of Cup contenders, eager to make amends for a quick first-round playoff exit.

They made a few tweaks in the offseason, adding forwards Tyler Ennis and Marcus Foligno via trade. Cullen, by effect, replaces Martin Hanzal, who departed to Dallas in free agency. The Wild also are without Jason Pominville and Marco Scandella, traded to Buffalo for Ennis and Foligno.

The main difference between last year’s collapse and the makings of an rerun is the presence of goalie Carey Price, who was injured most of last season, and defenseman Shea Weber, who was in Nashville then. Price’s play especially has dipped off significantly since 2016 turned to 2017, having allowed three or more goals in 11 of his last 16 starts.

We here at SB Nation have developed the BEANS Score?, which is the Baseball-Endured Aggravation Numerical Standard, and it runs from 1 to 10. You will probably never see a 9 or a 10 because those would require DL time, if not hospitalization, which means it’s stopped being funny. If we’re having fun, an 8 is the maximum.

I’ll admit, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about how well Carly Rae Jepsen threw a baseball before, and I guess I don’t have to after. It was not a good first pitch, no.

Again, so we’ve learned that Mariah Carey doesn’t warm up with some long toss before her shows. The throw was bad, but there’s something about laughing at it a little too hard that makes me uncomfortable.

In two of those seasons*, Trout was clearly the best player in the league, but he lost because enough voters couldn’t handle the fact that he didn’t personally kick open the door to the postseason and drag the rest of his Marshon Lattimore Jerseys teammates through by their nostrils.

I won’t make fun of voters too much for Miguel Cabrera’s Triple Crown season because that was an obvious historical outlier.

Here we are, and Trout is kicking on the door to the Adam Shaheen Jerseys postseason, trying to break it down, with his fingers firmly shoved in his teammates’ nostrils. Metaphorically. If he does it, if the Angels make the Wild Card Game, there will be no argument: The Angels wouldn’t have been anywhere close to the postseason without Trout.

Now flip the argument to the leading contender, Altuve. The Astros are 12 games ahead of the Angels, who are in second place. If they had replaced him with, say, Pete Kozma, they would still have a comfortable first-place lead. When the Astros make the postseason, they’ll have done so with the help of one of the best players in baseball, but he wasn’t what pushed them over the top. I mean, if you want to do this meme style …

Wide receiver Marqise Lee was carted off the field during the Jaguars’ practice on Sunday, but the extent of his injury isn’t known.

According to coach Doug Marrone, the wide receiver was running a basic route when he stopped short and apparently hurt his right leg.

“I know that he was looking to stop,” Marrone said. “I know he stopped and they (the trainers) are evaluating him right now.”

“As a homicide prosecutor and violent crimes prosecutor, I had to try a violent offender or a murderer 100 days after arrest or the person goes free. I know there’s a couple of prosecutors that are working with the league on these personal conduct issues, but I gotta tell ya there’s a whole group of prosecutors and law enforcement folks laughing at them going, ‘Why does it take so long?'”

“These things are tough for everybody. It’s tough for the league. It’s tough for the team. It’s tough for the player,” Jones said. “I think, at some point, you should be able to get the information in some sort of time frame that it doesn’t carry on like this particular investigation has.”

The Ravens will have Joe Flacco play in a knee brace in his second season back from a torn ACL. Feel free to use that as a metaphor for their 2017 season — they’d better brace themselves, because they’ll be scrambling around to some widespread locations to try to redeem their missed opportunity from last season.

They’re taking a chance on a later bye week instead of an early one following their trip to London to face the Jaguars in Week 3. But it makes sense, because in December they travel back to Pittsburgh on a Sunday night, some 50 weeks after their AFC North chances died on Antonio Brown’s stretch for a last-second game-winning touchdown. Avoiding a third straight playoff-less season is paramount.

The Blue Jays scored seven runs in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Angels for a rally capped by Steve Pearce’s walk-off grand slam to life the Jays to victory. It was the second walk-off grand slam for Pearce in four days.

It’s just as good, Pearce said. It’s, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ You’ve got to go up there and attack that at-bat. I went up there and just looked for my pitch. He missed a couple pitches pretty bad early, so I was able to sit on my pitch and unload on it.Charlotte Hornets Elite JerseyFrancois Beauchemin Elite Jersey Just because the Yankees acquired Jaime Garcia from the Twins doesn’t mean the Yankees are done dealing. They are trying to land Gray, but it will be Luis Severino (7-4, 3.03 ERA) taking the mound Monday. Michael Fulmer (10-8, 3.35) will start for the Tigers, who are trying to unload Wilson and may have done so by the time Monday’s game at Yankee Stadium begins.

Pudge Rodriguez is one of the most decorated catchers in major league history. The former Texas Rangers backstop has 13 All-Star nominations and 14 Gold Gloves, both of which are the most for any catcher in MLB history. The Puerto Rico native is entering the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Retiring in 2012, Rodriguez turned a promising beginning as one of the best catcher prospects into a Hall of Fame career playing for the Rangers, Yankees, Tigers, Marlins, Astros and Nationals. He will enter the Hall of Fame as a Ranger.

Rodriguez was named AL MVP in the 1999 season, with a .332 batting average, 35 home runs and 133 RBIs for Texas. Rodriguez later helped the Florida Marlins to a World Series title in 2003.

Hopefully we can continue to do the right thing as a whole. Obviously there’s going to be people that don’t follow the same suit. Don’t be those folks.

Neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members and other white supremacist groups staged a rally Friday to protest the city of Charlottesville’s plans to remove a Robert E. Lee statue from a park. On Saturday, a 20-year-old man drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and wounding at least 19 others. Hours later, two Virginia state troopers were killed when the helicopter they were flying in as part of a large-scale police effort at the rally crashed into a wooded area outside the city.

The big trade deadline has passed, but there will still be some trades that happen here and there when a player is put on waivers.

One such deal went down Saturday when the Pirates acquired utility player Sean Rodriguez from the Braves.P.J. Hairston Authentic JerseySolomon Hill Authentic Jersey Atlanta is 12 1/2 games out of a wild-card spot, so there’s not too much they can do to get into the playoff race with the Diamondbacks and Rockies owning a stranglehold on those two berths.

Seattle entered play Tuesday one game out of the second American League wild card spot. At 57-56, the Mariners are one of a half-dozen teams sitting just outside a playoff spot now that could conceivably make a run by the end of September.

But doing it without Hernandez is not ideal, no matter how much he has struggled this year. During the right-hander’s previous two-month stint on the DL this season, Seattle endured its worst stretch of the year, losing 12 of 16 games at one point and bottoming out at eight games under .500.

Hernandez is in the midst of his worst season in more than a decade, carrying a 4.28 ERA in 13 starts 鈥?only two of which have seen him pitch at least seven innings.

It depends who is running the team, who the GM is, who the manager is and what kind of look they’re going for, Gardner said. What kind of guys are in the lineup besides just the leadoff guy. It depends on what makes the lineup work.

Souza said lineups with significant power six or seven players deep have a better chance of capitalizing on deployment of a leadoff hitter with pop.

We’re blessed with a lot of guys with a lot of power, Souza said. Our 3-4-5 hitters are not going to suffer if one of the leadoff hitters has power. But, not a lot of teams have six, seven players who can hit 20 home runs.

Hope. The NFL sells hope more than any other league. In the NBA, we can pencil in the Warriors and Cavs in the finals. In baseball, does anyone care if it’s not the Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, or Cardinals? College football has Alabama, Clemson, USC, Michigan, etc.

Eric Ebron Game Jersey For NFL fans, this time of year is hopeful. There are fan bases across the country getting excited for their team’s run to the Super Bowl. Get hot at the right time, and you can watch your favorite team play in Minnesota on a cold Sunday in February.

One fan base whose hopes should be strong right now is that of the Tennessee Titans. That hope rests, as it rightfully should, on the shoulders of quarterback Marcus Mariota.

Both will bring immediate value and consistency to the Lions’ blocking corps, but the biggest upside on the depth chart could belong to another new addition. Greg Robinson was the second pick of the 2014 NFL Draft after two seasons as Auburn’s starting left tackle. Despite huge potential and even bigger expectations, his career with the Rams failed to pan out.

The rate at which these former players’ brains were diagnosed with CTE is alarming, but not surprising. A previous study included the brains of 165 former players, and of those, 96 percent of the former NFL players’ brains showed signs of CTE.

Womens Hugh Thornton Jersey Imagine every quarterback in the NFL was dropped by their current team and a draft decided who would go where.

Tom Brady may have finished the 2016 season with 28 touchdowns and two interceptions, but his 40th birthday is in August. It probably wouldn’t be smart for a team at the top of the draft order to scoop him up, especially considering that’s a roster that likely isn’t a single player away from being a Super Bowl contender.

But how young does a team like the Cleveland Browns need to go? Should Aaron Rodgers not be a top-three pick just because he turns 34 in December? He’s still Aaron freakin’ Rodgers.

Fans are usually eager for the start of training camp. It gives a glimpse of what they can expect from their favorite team this season and it means the long wait for football is nearly over. Jaguars fans, however, are having a harder time being enthusiastic about the team right now.

“We’re going to look at it,” Marrone said, via ESPN’s Michael DiRocco. “We’re going to look at those plays. If there’s any struggle or things we don’t like, then obviously we’re going to be smart enough to throw that crap out.”

Tyler Patmon, who has started two NFL games in his three-year career and was not signed by any team in 2016, picked Bortles off twice. Linebacker Telvin Smith snagged one interception and ran it back for a touchdown, and linebacker Josh McNary and safety Tashaun Gipson each had a pick.

Ryan O’Halloran of Jacksonville.com charted Bortles as completing 13 of 22 passes, or 59 percent, in 11-on-11 drills. Three of his picks came in 11-on-11 work.

This is part of the reason Jaguars fans have such a hard time mustering any enthusiasm about training camp. Bortles threw 16 picks against just 23 touchdowns last season, and he has thrown 11 pick-sixes over his three-year career.

But it is just practice, and Bortles hadn’t thrown any picks over the first two days of training camp. And it’s unlikely that Chad Henne or Brandon Allen will beat out Bortles for the starting role. For Jaguars fans’ sake, here’s hoping Bortles shakes off his very bad day.

The 2017 NHL Entry Draft opened the offseason in earnest Friday with the first round. Below is the full draft picks and results for all seven rounds, featuring pick number, team, player and position.

There may not be a generational talent like Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews in this year’s class, but the draft still offers plenty of intrigue. That’s especially so as Vegas, a true wild card, builds for its future with the myriad draft picks acquired while holding other teams hostage during the expansion process.

Fans have pointed out how hypocritical of a comment this is given Scott’s career in the NHL. The journeyman player was suspended multiple times while in the league for his dirty play.Elite Kids Kenyan Drake Jersey
We have more revenue than the Flyers, Penguins, the Boston Bruins. Most of our tickets are multiyear. The lower bowl is three to 10 years.

That’s impressive company to keep, especially for a team that has yet to take the ice.

Elite Kids Brandon Marshall Jersey Foley insisted the Knights have sold 13,500 of the 17,000 seats for regular-season games at T-Mobile Arena. All of the suites sold out, too, he said.

For perspective, the Penguins have a sellout streak of 484 consecutive games at PPG Paints Arena and were the NHL’s 11th-most profitable franchise in 2016 according to Forbes’ most recent valuation. Forbes estimated the Penguins took in $85 million in gate receipts for the 2015-16 season.

I know this is not a team, player or coach, but the green room idea was a terrible one. Keeping many of the top prospects in the green room, as opposed to in the stands where there is always a special public reaction when selected, was a misfire by the league’s events/PR group. Please, next year have all of the prospects in the crowd, not off behind closed doors like in other sports.

According to Michael Russo of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Wild, who made Dumba, Scandella and Staal available for Wednesday’s expansion draft, agreed to losing Haula and Tuch instead in a deal with Vegas.

Elite Kids Jonathan Toews Jersey Haula would have become a restricted free agent July 1. Russo reported he agreed to a multi-year deal with the Golden Knights during their exclusive free agency window, which closed at 10 a.m. ET Wednesday.

Haula, 26, played in 72 regular season games and recorded 15 goals and 26 points for the team with the second-best record in the Western Conference last season.Elite Kids Alec Ogletree Jersey
The Vegas Golden Knights announced on Wednesday that their expansion draft picks have officially been submitted.

To maintain salary cap equilibrium after handing Evgeny Kuznetsov a monster eight-year, $62.4 million extension, the Capitals traded 24-goal scorer Marcus Johansson to the Devils in exchange for second- and third-round draft picks in 2018. Johansson, 26, broke out as a consistent threat last season, logging a career-high in goals and points (58). His loss will be difficult to bear, but it was necessary in that it cleared his $4.5 million cap hit from the books.